


burn the page and let the prologue begin

by towokuwusatsuwu



Category: Kamen Rider Gaim
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dark, Dark, Drug Abuse, Drug Withdrawal, Established Relationship, M/M, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-02-26 05:20:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13228899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/towokuwusatsuwu/pseuds/towokuwusatsuwu
Summary: Zack survives in a dystopian world where Zawame City has fallen to the Inves and Sengoku Ryoma. He sneaks out of the city one night, determined to find Kureshima Mitsuzane, who vanished years ago without a trace. What he finds may be more difficult to stomach than he thought possible, but Zack is not one for giving up and especially not where Micchi is concerned. Determined to save him no matter the cost, Zack is forced to choose between his rebellion life with his friends and loved ones beneath the streets of Zawame or in the corrupt world that Sengoku Ryoma has crafted with his own hands. To save Micchi, he would do anything, pay any price, or so he would like to believe.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dialecstatic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dialecstatic/gifts).



Zawame City has been crumbling and falling apart, heavily infested by the vines of Helheim, for the last three years. Zack knows this as well as any of its rebellious inhabitants, but the city he once called home has never felt so much like an aging grave as it does tonight. Every footstep seems to echo too loudly and he curses himself for this idea even though he knows that remaining underground would have driver him stir crazy after a few more hours.

This knowledge does nothing to limit the anxiety crawling beneath his skin, the certainty that someone or something is watching him from the shadows and waiting to attack him.

Theoretically, he knows this is not possible. Inves are not quiet creatures by habit, Demushu has never been one to do anything other than to loudly announce his presence, and Redyue would have sooner killed him for stepping out into the moonlight than simply watched him walk around. He knows the ways of those who rule this world now, has had to watch friends and family fall by their hands to learn these lessons that he will never forget for as long as he lives. There is only one person still in command who would toy with him like this, but Zack is not special. He is not Kouta, nor Kaito, nor anything that Sengoku Ryoma would set his inquisitive sights on.

Zack is a civilian, a bystander, hardly the warrior he once envisioned himself to be. He dons his belt and his lockseed when he has to fight, but he has never felt more useless than he does right now looking at his home already fallen into aging ruins at his feet.

He shakes his head and soldiers onward, only half-aware of where he plans on going. It’s difficult to get out of Zawame these days without being caught, but careful exploration has led him to believe that he has a better chance on a night with a new moon when the sky is black.

People had left before Zawame had fallen into the wasteland it currently is, and Zack has his mind set on finding one of those people. It was a goal he did not share with Kouta; their optimistic leader had all but given up on finding who Zack is desperate to see once more while Kaito, far more pragmatic, had simply told him that he had to do what he had to do but should not be surprised what he finds if he should so happen to find who he looks for.

Gritting his teeth, Zack managed to cage the annoyance he had with this thought process, but he let it fall to the wayside because Kumon Kaito is the last person to argue with concerning the still-missing Kureshima Mitsuzane of Team Gaim.

After all, no one would believe Zack has reason to know him better than even his teammates do. They had both been determined to keep whatever they were a secret from the others.

Micchi had told Zack he was leaving Zawame on a night not unlike this one, but that had been nearly two years ago when the ruin of the city crept up on all of them and reminded them of how hopeless this situation is. Communication had fallen out soon after the invasion of the Inves armies from Helheim, and Zack can only assume the rest of the world lies dormant just as their city does, but he has no way of knowing. Part of him hopes that Micchi was able to get farther away than he can reach, found a pocket of safety and hid himself away in it.

The saner part of him, molded after listening to Kaito, knew that that was unlikely. Even if there was somewhere safer in the world out there, Micchi would have never left Japan.

His guilt in aiding the Inves invasion wouldn’t have let him stray too far from home.

The final war had seen him taking the correct side for the first time in this struggle, but it had been too little too late and the combined forces of the Inves and the warriors Sengoku Ryoma had at his disposal had been more than enough to overpower the Armored Riders trying to stand against them. People had died, and in the end they were forced to retreat and give their city over to monsters who would crush and destroy everything beautiful about it.

Micchi had assisted with that. He’d played every side of the field to his advantage only to have what he wanted most plucked from his fingers, and only then had he reverted to playing the role of the hero and trying to save the day. Their combined failure had been a heavy burden on his already weighted shoulders, and Zack wishes he had been able to remove some of it. Any of it.

Logically, he knew this was impossible. They had been surrounded by injured and beaten people and Micchi had to face all of that with no buffer between it and himself, and he had to judge his own actions and their consequences. And if he had not been harsh enough on himself, Kaito had been. His fury had been nearly impossible to restrain; Zack and Kouta had to hold him back and even then, he stood a good chance at knocking them both out of the way.

He was only upset about Kouta being injured, that was all. Zack knows that better than anyone.

A sudden sound has him darting into the shadows, crouching to make himself as small as he can, pleased that his Team Baron jacket is the same deep black of the darkness around him. He needs as much cover as he can get so as not to be found, after all.

A pair of soldiers walk by his position without noticing him and continue out of sight. Zack holds his breath, counts out five full minutes, then rises and carries on his journey.

Micchi had left, and he never came back just like he told Zack he had no intention of doing. And still, some stupid and childish part of him had thought Micchi would come back, because surely he couldn’t leave Gaim behind. He couldn’t leave  _ Zack _ behind, and yet he did. He could be dead, for all Zack knows. Killed before he ever made it past the city limits.

He wonders if Kureshima Takatora has the guts needed to order his brother’s execution should he be captured, but he doesn’t want to linger on that thought for too long.

Zack is slow sometimes, creeping around the edges of light, and faster other times, sprinting through shadows he’s catalogue as well as he knows the back of his hand. Zawame is not a small city, but he had started roughly in the center and so he has that working in his favor as he nears the edge and the expanse of highway beyond. There is little there to offer him cover, so he has to have the stamina to run until his legs give out.

He could go back, he knows. Going to all this trouble for Micchi of all people would earn him scorn from Kaito and most likely a stony displeased silence from Kouta, but neither of them would punish him for it. As far as either of them seem to know, Zack is stupidly holding onto the hope that one of their allies is going to come back to them one day, and nothing more. He doesn’t want them to know more, not yet, not until he has Micchi back.

And he will find him, or he won’t come back at all. He’s already made that decision.

He has one last patch of shadow to hide in as he scans the highway and weighs the pros and cons of heading to all that open space. It doesn’t look as though anyone is patrolling out there, but then, why would they need to? The rest of the world left Zawame to burn.

Zack holds his breath, counts to ten, and sprints for the road. If he’s caught now, he will either be gunned down on sight or dragged back to Yggdrasil to await judgment and a likely public trial to send a message to Kouta and Kaito. The first would be acceptable to him, but not the latter, not something that will make everyone suffer. Not something else brutal and visible to make Peko cry. Zack refuses to be the reason his best friend falls asleep crying.

The pavement is hard beneath his feet and even though it is nearly impossible to control the volume of his footsteps in a run, he does his best to keep his steps as muffled as possible. Enough greenery has spread across the road that the sound there is softer but the asphalt is louder and if someone happens to be nearby, they’ll hear him. He doesn’t know what Yggdrasil will do if they catch someone trying to escape. Other than Micchi, no one else has dared.

He doesn’t even have a way to prove that Micchi made it out of the city alive. Maybe Kureshima Takatora would have executed his brother privately, or imprisoned him.

That thought is too cruel, but enough of a motivation to make Zack run faster.

There are fates crueler than death. There are futures bleaker and colder and harsher than having everything end suddenly and finally, and Zack has had to learn this. He doesn’t want to have to suffer it because he couldn’t run fast enough.

No one ever catches him. On the other side of the highway, he stops and bends double, hands on his knees, panting harshly to catch his breath, before looking at his watch.

He makes it outside of Zawame City just past two in the morning.

* * *

The journey to the next city takes hours on foot, but Zack is athletic and the quiet calms his nerves rather than setting them on edge like back in Zawame. There is destruction here, and once he reaches the outer edge of the next city, he can see Inves here, too. But not as thick, and not as heavy, and the air is not as dismal as back home. Progress, or the invasion hit here quickly and swiftly and then left little behind. He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t have time to find out. When he finds Micchi, then he can think about asking questions. Until he does, though, he has to focus his mind on his mission without being swayed aside.

He makes it to the edge of the next city and uses the sides of buildings and turned-over cars as coverage.

It’s as he makes his way past what looks like an abandoned nightclub that two people sweep out of the entrance to block his path, the larger grabbing him roughly by the arm. Zack doesn’t bother to struggle, not wanting to cause a scene and draw worse.

“You’re not from around here,” the taller man says, fingers biting into Zack’s arm as if he dares him to speak up against the slight pain. “I don’t know where you’re from or how you got here but you need to leave as soon as you can. It’s getting worse here every day.”

Zack shakes his head, fumbling for his wallet and the picture within. “No. I’m looking for someone and I’m not going anywhere until I find him.”

The picture is of Micchi in his Team Gaim jacket, fresh-faced and beaming up at the camera, his eyes bright and happy. Zack had filched it from Mai’s wallet when he learned she had separate photos of the various members of the team and had kept quiet when she complained about losing it; he needs it for his own purposes, after all. He’s almost hesitant about handing it to these strangers, but he needs all the help he can get out this far.

The smaller man accepts the photo and produces a lighter from his pocket, clicking it for light, peering down at the photo before he lets out a small noise. “This can’t be who I think it is. He doesn’t look like this anymore, but… Does he have a name you can give us?”

Zack pauses at this, uncertain as to what name Micchi would use out this far. “Mitsuzane,” he finally settles on, though the name is foreign on his tongue. He’s hardly ever used it.

The bigger man leans down to study the picture for himself, letting go of Zack’s arm as if stung before he looks back up at Zack with a grave expression on his face. “Mitsuzane,” he says, and the name sounds too natural in his mouth for comfort. “He’s about… Nineteen years old?”

“Yes,” Zack confirms. He doesn’t add that he’s missed Micchi’s last few birthdays because of all of this, that he wanted to make them special once he became a part of Micchi’s life.

“That’s what I was afraid of.” The smaller man hands the picture back. “We know him.”

_ Know, _ not  _ knew. _ Micchi is still alive, though Zack’s gut churns at the expressions on their faces. “Please tell me you know where he is,” he finally chokes out, though it nearly strangles him.

“There’s a building three blocks down with the windows blacked out and caution tape on the door.” The smaller man pauses to make sure Zack is listening before continuing. “He’s there. At least, he was the last time that we saw him. He’s… Not in the best shape.”

Zack doesn’t argue that none of them are in good shape, merely thanks the men before taking his leave, hurrying down the street and using the cover of darkness to make it down the few blocks between him and his goal. Finding Micchi in this first city is either a stroke of luck or a terrible fate, and the men behind him would have him thinking it was the latter before he even had a chance to look into Micchi’s eyes once more.

The building they described is off-putting, something about its aura warning Zack not to come too close even as he forces himself up to the entrance. He doesn’t get a chance to knock on the door, though he has his hand raised when it swings inward and a sickly lean man peers out at him. Even in the darkness around them with only a faint light spilling out from the interior of the building, his waxy pale skin shows, and Zack fights the urge to lean away, to put as much distance between the two of them as possible.

“Strangers don’t come around here much and I know I don’t know your face.” The man narrows his eyes up at Zack. “What the hell are you doing out here this late? You trying to die?”

“It’s easier to travel at night.” Zack is short, curt, to the point. “I’m looking for someone here.”

The man sighs up at him. “Who, then?” he asks. “Be quick about it. I don’t have all night.”

It takes all of Zack’s courage to swallow the lump in his throat now that he’s here. “Mitsuzane.”

The man grips Zack by the shoulder and hauls him inside, shutting the door behind him, and Zack starts to argue before the sound of Inves flying overhead stops him. Sighing, the man scrubs a hand over his face, leaning back against the grimy wall behind him.

“Knew someone would come looking for him,” he says. “Too pretty and rich to run away forever.”

“Is he alive?” Zack has to ask, even though the other men had said they know him. He has to be sure. He has to be prepared. “He didn’t come all the way out here to die, did he?”

The man regards Zack with something in that sweet spot between pity and sympathy, enough of both to make Zack’s skin crawl. “I don’t know if you’d call what he is right now  _ alive, _ man.”

Before he can ask any more questions— struggling to breathe around the sudden tightness in his throat— the man grips him tight by the shoulder and hauls him toward a set of rickety stairs that lead lower, probably to a basement. Safer to inhabit in a time like this, he thinks, and every step downward reveals more light, and more noise. People moving around, alive. Micch is one of them, maybe,  _ maybe, _ what the fuck did this man even mean by what he said?

“Where’s the kid?” the man calls out as soon as they make it into what appears to be, as Zack assumed, a basement. Everyone lifts their heads and looks toward them. “We’ve got someone here looking for the kid and I don’t want to spend half the night involved in someone’s else’s drama. What room’s he in tonight?”

“Top floor,” a woman in the middle of a group of children says; she looks at Zack with kind eyes. “He went up there a few hours ago for space and hasn’t come back since then.”

Zack jerks his arm away from the man and turns on his heel, hurrying back up the stairs, rounding the first landing to find that they continue upward, dull lights just enough to not trip over his own feet as he hurries up them. It’s late, he’s tired, and his legs are already sore from the journey, his feet like cement. He’s afraid about what he will find, but he has to see Micchi.

There are multiple floors to this building but Zack only continues climbing until he finally comes out on top, a wide landing spread all around him, more of a loft area than anything else. The room is mostly dark except for dim lamps here and there barely giving him enough light to see to the edges of the room. It takes him an additional few minutes of just standing, just staring into the shadows, to see a familiar shape leaning against a space of wall beside a wide window.

“I said I was spending the night up here  _ alone. _ ” The voice is strained and hoarse and nothing at all like Zack remembers, even up to the very end when Micchi was losing his grip on everything. “I’m not coming back down. I know the risks and I don’t fucking care anymore.”

The coarse language would be almost comical any other time; Micchi had a habit of speaking almost too formally sometimes and never this casually, but nothing about this is funny or could ever be funny. Not in a situation like the world they currently live in.

“I’m not here to take you back downstairs.” Zack speaks slowly and deliberately, and moves with soft footsteps, but he can see the moment Micchi’s back tenses, the moment he leans purposefully away from the wall. “The others told me that I could find you up here.”

He stops behind what looks like a worn-down couch positioned to look out the window, and he can too easily imagine Micchi sitting here and looking out into the dark. Up here and all alone, away from the rest of the people living here… Punishing himself, even now, when he was only a pawn on the battlefield that led to all of this. The thought makes his chest ache in a horrible way and he rubs over where his heart beats furiously against his ribs.

“I’ve finally lost it,” Micchi says without turning around to look at him. “I still have dreams and nightmares but I haven’t had a delusion since nii-san… Since I thought he was dead.”

Zack’s heart lurches; Micchi had told him about those once, in the quiet of the night when everyone else was asleep. “I’m not a delusion. I came all the way out here to find you.”

“You might have. That’s something you’d do because you’re the hero type, but at the same time… I’ve wanted to see you so badly I wouldn’t put it past myself to imagine you into existence.” Micchi almost turns toward him, then stops himself. “Zack… Is it really you?”

The space between them is so slight compared to what it was hours ago but Zack finds himself unable to keep it any longer. He rounds the couch and throws his arms around Micchi, dragging him forward against his chest, pressing his nose into Micchi’s hair which smells nothing like it used to and carries a heavy odor of smoke that almost,  _ almost _ has him reeling back in shock. But he doesn’t, and he resists, and he holds onto Micchi as tightly as he can, running his hands up and down his back, alarmed at how thin he feels, how he can feel the knobs of his spine through his skin. Food has been harder to come by, for certain, but it feels more to him like Micchi hasn’t been eating at all.

“You’re real,” Micchi whispers, “because I wouldn’t let you hug me if I just made you up.”

“You were always too hard on yourself,” Zack insists even as he smoothes Micchi’s hair back enough that he can press a kiss to his forehead, still unwilling to look down at his face, almost afraid of what he might find. When his fingers brush over something cold and metallic when he tries to stroke Micchi’s face, though, he leans back. “You don’t deserve to treat yourself like that, and I have no intention of letting you— Your face…”

Micchi smiles up at him, though it isn’t quite a real smile; the ring through his lip and the two studs beneath it pick up the light just slightly. “A real makeover, isn’t it? They hurt a lot. You’d be surprised, I think. But I don’t remember it hurting much. It’s hard to remember most things now.”

It takes a moment to reconcile the image in front of him with the image of Kureshima Mitsuzane he has in his head. There are braids just past his right temple, holding his hair away from the studs and spikes though his eyebrow. Holding his hair away from his ear, too, and the studs running through the cartilage, the spike dangling from his earlobe. There’s a matching stud in his nose, too. The piercings would throw him off more if they were even close to the most upsetting thing about his appearance, but jewelry is jewelry and all Zack cares about is how sharp the bones of Micchi’s face look beneath his skin, how sallow his skin is.

“You forget things when you’re taking things you shouldn’t be to forget them. Did you know Yggdrasil produced medicine that could easily be turned into recreational drugs? I do now.” Micchi laughs when Zack recoils from those words. “What? You’ve never tried any?”

He sways closer to Zack, close enough to one of the few lamps in the room for Zack to see that his eyes are bloodshot and wild, almost manic. His bony fingers twist in the fabric of Zack’s shirt, tight enough that Zack can’t just pull him off, but he couldn’t, not when Micchi is like this. His heart breaks again and again in rapid succession for the beautiful boy who came all the way out here to purge his mind of the pain and the guilt with drugs, and Zack let him do it by not following him then or coming to find him sooner when he was so close.

“Kaito would kill me if I did drugs,” Zack says. And it’s true, and easier to say.

Micchi scoffs up at him and rocks up on his toes, trying to use his grip on Zack’s shirt to pull him downward, but he’s lost muscle and he isn’t as strong as he used to be. “That’s too bad.”

“Micchi, I don’t—” Zack’s cut off when Micchi goes for a kiss, and it’s harsh and painful, all force and need and he isn’t used to the metal against his mouth, and it almost hurts with how hard Micchi kisses him. He yanks away immediately. “ _ Stop _ that. What the hell are you doing?”

“I’ve been so lonely out here. None of these people  _ know _ me. They don’t know who I was. Who I used to be. But then… I’ve forgotten a lot of that.” Micchi laughs, and the sound is unstable and shrieking and Zack has to fight the urge to pull away from him. “I’ve forgotten so much! I’d almost forgotten the sound of your voice and the way your arms felt around me.”

The guilt punches Zack hard in the gut. “If I had known this had happened, I’d have been here.”

“Always a hero. I always liked that about you. So…  _ stalwart _ and brave.” Micchi giggles, then slaps a hand over his mouth to muffle the sound. “Kaito must be so proud of you now.”

Zack drops his hands on top of Micchi’s shoulders. “You need to sit down. Or sleep. Or—”

Micchi kisses him again, quick and sudden and out of nowhere, cutting him off mid sentence and leaping up at him so that he has to catch Micchi or risk him falling. This isn’t how he envisioned seeing Micchi against for the first time, or kissing him, or holding him, and even though the taste of ash on his tongue and the erratic beat of his heart against Zack’s chest tells him that Micchi is gone, so far gone, he can’t bring himself to push Micchi away. Not from a kiss, not when he’s been out here all alone away from the people who loved him and cared about him, not when he thought he was suffering from delusions yet again because he was so desperate to see Zack again he thought his mind had snapped.

It’s when Micchi reaches for his belt buckle that Zack separates them, gripping Micchi tightly by the wrists and feeling awful for holding him so hard in the first place. He’s suffered so much already, but Zack refuses to let him do this to himself. “No. You need to stop right now.”

“It’s not that big a deal. Y’know, money’s not really a thing anymore… It doesn’t have a value in a world that’s gone to hell. Gotta use other things are currency.” Micchi cocks his head at him and smiles, and Zack’s stomach turns in revulsion at the thought of what exactly Micchi is hinting at with this. “So it doesn’t mean anything, not really. It’s just something to do. Something that feels good instead of bad. You didn’t come all the way out here just to kiss me, did you?”

The implication nearly closes Zack’s throat and tears prick the backs of his eyes; the thought of Micchi selling his body for anything, the thought that Micchi expects Zack to just use him like others must have… How can he think such a thing? What the hell has he done to himself? “I would never do this to you, not when you’re… When you’re so out of your own head you don’t even know what you’re saying. You can’t even tell me that you want this because you’re not coherent enough to think about it. Micchi, I won’t… I couldn’t…”

“Of course you couldn’t. That’s very like you.” Micchi sighs and leans away from him, running his tongue over his lip ring. “That’s too bad. I’m sure you’d have been very good at it, too.”

Zack lets out the smallest sigh of relief and steps closer, running a hand up Micchi’s arm to squeeze his shoulder. “Maybe later, when you’re… You. I just don’t want to hurt you.”

“Why not? You should want to hurt me. You should want to kill me for what I did!” Micchi shoves him back and whirls away from him, wrapping his arms around himself, shaking his head back and forth. “I did this! I let them do this! I helped them, and you don’t… You  _ have _ to want to hurt me.”

“That was almost four years ago and you were a child! I don’t care if you think you were on their level of intelligence. They used you. Sengoku Ryoma—” Zack spits the name out like poison on his tongue, thick and heavy. “He used you to turn your brother into a monster.”

Micchi throws his head back and laughs, and the sound is loud and booming and echoes around the room, and it raises goosebumps on Zack’s skin. There’s a hysterical edge to the sound. How long has Micchi been staving off this inevitable breakdown with drugs?

“Nii-san was a good man! He wanted to do the right thing. He wanted to save the world, and he didn’t want what Sengoku Ryoma wanted for him.” Micchi inhales, sharp and wet and shuddery, and then falls to his knees so hard it makes Zack wince. “But in the end there was nothing left he could do. And I was one of the people who forced him to make that choice. Me. Me!”

He curls into himself, heaving and shuddering, and it takes Zack a moment to realize that he’s crying, bent inward on himself on this dirty floor, in torn and dirty clothes that do not belong to him, with his hair tied back and his face gleaming with metal and who knows what toxins coursing through his veins. He hadn’t come all the way out here to die like Zack had first feared, but just as there are fates worse than death, there are choices worse than dying. He can only imagine what the inside of Micchi’s head must look like now.

Zack kneels behind him, folding his arms around him and pulling Micchi back against his chest. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here with you when I should have been,” he whispers against Micchi’s ear, his lips brushing against cool metal. “I should have been here to take care of you.”

Micchi doesn’t say anything to that, merely curls smaller into himself as he knots his fingers in Zack’s shirt tightly once again. He falls asleep like this eventually, his hand going slack, his sobs breaking off into uneven breathing, and only then does Zack feel free to move.

He picks Micchi up, always an easy task but easier now, too easy for that matter, and moves to the couch, laying him down on the stained cushions before shrugging out of his Baron jacket and lying it over Micchi’s too-thin body. He has to figure out a way to get them back home, and he has to figure out a way to help Micchi get better. But for now, he sits beside the couch and holds Micchi’s hand and tries to find some semblance of sleep before morning comes.


	2. Chapter 2

When Kureshima Mitsuzane wakes up stretched out across the couch he has spent most of his nights on the last few weeks, he feels like last night must have been a dream. It doesn’t seem possible that Zack had been here, in front of him, speaking to him like he had last night.

It wouldn’t be the first time Micchi has had a dream about the people he left behind. Usually, he dreams them dead with Takatora standing above them, limbs covered in Helheim’s vines.

It seems almost too cruel that he has to live this reality every time he closes his eyes, but he counts it as fair. He counts it as payback for all of the friends he had made suffer by boxing them all into this fate, by pressuring Takatora to take what Sengoku Ryoma offered so freely.

Micchi is facing the back of the couch when he wakes up and stretches, the aches in his limbs and joints a familiar companion these days. When he feels something on top of him, shielding him from the chill in the room, he sets a hand on top of the fabric to find a Team Baron jacket. Old and worn and patched in places, but it smells like Zack’s old cologne.

The realization makes him sit up too quickly, and he winces. His head is throbbing.

Zack is slumped against the couch, legs stretched out in front of him, head resting against the arm of the couch. Asleep, still, and against his better judgment Micchi stretches out a hand first to check his pulse— steady, strong, and slow— before letting himself relax. The fact he thought Zack was dead as soon as he saw him says more about his current state of mind than he wants to think about. What had even happened last night? His memories are all over the place.

He swings his legs over the side of the couch and sits up, shifting the jacket so he can push his hands into the sleeves and hug it tight around him to hold in some semblance of the warmth it had given him while he slept. Too many questions appear in his mind: How are the others? Are they alive? Is the rest of Team Gaim okay? How many of them hate him for disappearing from Zawame City when the current state of the entire world is his fault and nothing can ever excuse that? Is his brother still alive, or even still his brother? He assumes Takatora must be alive, can’t imagine a world in which Sengoku Ryoma let anything happen to his precious god, but just the same part of him wants the evil version of his brother incarnate to perish.

But Zack is asleep and Micchi can feel something behind the headache and the general aches in his joints, the hunger in his body that tells him what he had taken last night is not going to be enough to get him through the day. He palms his pockets, finds the bag of pills he had paid for last night and fishes a few of them out, peering down at them.

Everyone would be so disappointed in him, he’s sure. Kaito especially; he can almost feel Kaito’s piercing and judgmental gaze on his shoulders as he dry swallows the three pills without hesitation. He’s lucky, in this respect at least; it’s probably that he’s let his weight drop so severely, unable to keep food down, that so few pills can get him by.

There are harder drugs that Micchi knows he can get his hands on, knows that he can sell himself for higher prices if he really wants to— there are dealers in this city, and in the next three for that matter, who had liked him— but he’s terrified to go near those right now. Later, maybe, when he’s desperate for a fix and needs something stronger to keep him going, but for now he makes due with the weakest chemicals. Better than letting himself get destroyed too soon.

He pockets the pills and is relieved he can do it without Zack seeing, though he isn’t quite sure how he’ll do it if Zack plans on sticking around. Why did Zack even come after him? It doesn’t make sense to Micchi. He was a good part of the reason all of them were suffering right now, had worked alongside the rest of Yggdrasil to make sure that Takatora would be guaranteed the power to rule the world— and that had been when Micchi was sure he could grasp that power for himself and yank it out from under his brother’s feet. It had only been when he watched Takatora thrash and suffer and bleed Helheim’s poison from every pore of his skin and every vein and artery in his body that he backed off and allowed Ryoma’s plan to come to fruition. Micchi was too afraid to suffer that much for something he didn’t even  _ want. _

And then he ran. He ran like a coward when the weight of reality crashed down on him.

Zack shifts on the floor and Micchi tenses, watches his face twitch and his eyelids flutter until his eyes finally open and he sits up, stretching his arms above his head. Unlike Micchi, Zack has been taking care of himself and it shows in the muscles through his shoulders. He probably doesn’t have a choice, all things considered. He probably still has to fight, so he doesn’t have time to lounge around and let everything crumble around him like Micchi does.

“Hey,” Zack says, twisting around to look up at him. “You look good in my jacket.”

“You want it back? I know it’s kinda cold here. There’s no heat or anything.” Early mornings are always chilly before the sun comes up and warms the interiors of the visible rooms here.

Zack shakes his head. “Nah. I’m good. You… You feeling better this morning?”

“I guess I did. I’m still tired, but… That’s normal, so.” Micchi shrugs. He doesn’t have to explain to Zack that his nights have been mostly sleepless and full of nightmares. No reason to make Zack worry over him. “How about you? That doesn’t look exactly comfortable.”

“You know me. I can sleep anywhere.” Zack favors him with a sunny smile.

Micchi licks his dry lips thoughtfully; does he know Zack? He isn’t sure that it’s fair to make such a blanket statement anymore, and really Zack had never known him so maybe he doesn’t deserve the honor of getting to say that he knows Zack at all.

He doesn’t know what to say at all, to be honest. They hadn’t seen each other in so long and Micchi had so many questions but all of them were serious and unsavory, and it seemed unfair to make Zack answer those questions when Zack had already done so much just to find him. He had snuck out of Zawame and that could hardly be an easy feat considering how horrible Zawame had been when Micchi ran off and didn’t so much as look over his shoulder.

Truth be told, he doesn’t know what to say at all to fill the silence growing between them, one that had never existed before now. Even in the tense weeks before Micchi came to the conclusion he had to do anything he could to get out, Zack had always known what to say to at least make him feel a little less horrible about everything without excusing Micchi for every single horrible thing he had ever done. Micchi is young, still, even at twenty years old and as much as he adores Zack he doesn’t know that he can truly consider it love like he knows Zack does. He doesn’t even know if what they had had been true and pure and not just more of his own machinations; in the end the facade had felt more read to him than anything else had. He doesn’t know himself, and he can’t imagine someone like him being capable of love.

“How’d you get all the way out here, anyway?” That felt like a safer question to ask than anything else, and from the way Zack turns around to look at him, the warmth in his eyes not cooling a bit, it had been a safe question to ask. Micchi is glad for that much.

“Waited until it was dark and studied the patrols to make sure I knew their patterns well enough. I kept to the shadows and then ran like hell when I got the chance.” Zack stretches out a hand to rest it on top of Micchi’s knee, squeezing gently, and Micchi puts a hand on top of Zack’s. His skin is so warm, the scars on his knuckles so familiar. “Is that how you did it, too?”

Micchi shrugs; he honestly can’t remember, all he knows is that Zawame is hard to get in and out of without getting caught, but his memories of leaving are fuzzy. A lot of the middle memories are, probably due to his own denial and the drugs more than anything else, but also because he doesn’t like to think about those days. The others probably would have thrown him at Takatora’s feet in an instant, but Zack had protected him because Zack loved him, and the rest of Baron would back Zack up because Kaito backed Zack up even if he never liked Micchi in the first place and the two of them had clashed more times than Micchi likes to think about.

“It was a long time ago so it’s kind of hard to remember, I think it was mostly adrenalin which explains why I can’t remember most of the details now.” Micchi watches Zack’s face carefully and is relieved when Zack gives him a little nod, accepting this answer. But he would accept any bullshit Micchi fed him in the grand scheme of things. “I can’t believe you managed to get out of there. You really should keep running. The farther away you get… It’s better, believe me.”

Zack shifts up onto his knees, folding his arms on top of Micchi’s thighs, and the closeness feels so good and so bad at the same time. Micchi doesn’t deserve it. “You’re right, but I don’t want to leave the others behind. I just… Couldn’t get the thought of you out of my head no matter what.”

“You’re a good guy, Zack. I don’t think there’s anyone who deserves how good you are.” He doesn’t say that he means himself in particular but Zack frowns up at him and Micchi knows he got the point even if Micchi didn’t come right out and say it, but so be it. He doesn’t feel bad for saying it. He would never feel bad for speaking the truth, not anymore, not after all the lies, even if the truth is ugly. “But you really should keep running. You could have an actual life, or at least as close to one as possible. It’s not fair to stay there. This isn’t… Isn’t your fault.”

“I’m not going to let you sit here and blame yourself. I heard plenty of that before you left and I haven’t changed my mind about how I see it. You were sixteen, they were adults, and they used you.” Zack leans up to kiss him, a brief press of his warm soft lips against Micchi’s dry chapped ones, and it isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to him at all. “And I can’t just leave the others behind.”

“Then just go back and get your friends out and start running. We did everything we had our power to do to stop nii-san and it didn’t end up working, and… He only gets stronger the longer Helheim’s poison is in his veins.” The thought makes Micchi’s throat tight and he runs his hands through his hair, tugging at the braids, pulling at his roots. The pain is sharp and it centers him, anchors him, reminds him not to get emotional and dramatic in front of Zack.

Zack shifts up straighter and wraps his arms around Micchi, pulling him off the couch and into his lap, and Micchi goes far too willingly for someone who knows he doesn’t deserve this comfort. Zack’s arms were the safest place in the world to him once, somewhere the nightmares couldn’t reach him. If Takatora and Ryoma had come after him, Micchi was certain that hiding in Zack’s gentle but firm embrace would have been enough to shield him from them. Now, though, he doesn’t think he deserves that. He can’t imagine any reason why he would, at least.

“I can’t just leave things like this,” Zack tells him. “I can’t give up that hope.”

Micchi sighs and presses his face into Zack’s shoulder. “I know that. I know you can’t.”

He wishes that Zack would, anyway. He wishes that Zack could give up on the others and on hope and just understand they have to try to make a life in this new world any way that they can. They can’t fix things. They can’t change things. Before the Golden Fruit had been claimed, they still had a chance. But the moment Sengoku Ryoma ripped it from Roshuo’s dying fingers to present it to Takatora, everything was over. Hope, a chance at a better world… All of it.

_ As if you could have done a better job if you had actually gotten your hands on it, _ he thinks, and he lowers his head at the thought, scuffing his shoes against the floor.  _ You would have destroyed everything for Mai, and Mai didn’t even care about you. And can you blame her? You were young and stupid and it was never love. It was possessive infatuation. _

Micchi groans and rests his head in his hands, massaging his scalp, resisting the urge to yank on his braids again. The voices in his head have refused to let up ever since that day, and though the drugs had made things better for a little while, they were failing recently. He would probably need to up his dosage from three to four, but the thought made him skittish and nervous. Maybe it’s pitiful, but he’s too cowardly to die.

Zack’s hands squeeze his shoulders. “Hey, hey, calm down. It’s okay. I know your head probably hurts some… You’re on something, aren’t you? You said that last night…”

He trails off, but Micchi can hear the disappointment heavy in his voice and he can’t blame him for it. Of course Zack is disappointed in him. He ran away from his responsibility and dosed himself with the first thing he could get his hands on so he didn’t have to think about it anymore. He doesn’t deserve to be able to escape from the pain and the suffering of all of the people who died because of him.

“Yeah,” Micchi confirms, and he stands, leaning away from Zack in the process and stepping away from his embrace. He hugs Zack’s coat around him— too long for him, trailing the stained carpet— and walks over to the window, looking out over the scenery. Even out here, the Helheim vines crawl up most of the buildings, their bulbous fruits like bruises against the bricks. “You can think what you want of me for it, but I had to do what I had to do.”

Zack sighs softly behind him. “I’m not here to judge you, Micchi. I was just here to find you and see if you were okay. Maybe take you back home to the others.”

_ Home. To Zawame. _ “I know you think you’re doing the right thing or that you have good intentions, but I’ll die before I go back there and I mean it.”

“I know it sounds scary and I’m sure that it brings back a lot of unsavory memories for you, but… We miss you.  _ I _ miss you. The others do, too, Kouta and Mai and the rest of Gaim.” Micchi can hear Zack moving behind him and braces himself for the moment when Zack’s arms wrap around him from behind. “We’re still alive. We’re surviving. It’s possible. We can fight—”

Micchi pushes Zack away from him, twisting around to glare up at him. “Go fuck yourself, Zack. I’m not going back to that hell just because you think we can fight back. We can’t. I watched my brother turn into a monster and I know it’s over. Just accept it and move on.”

“If that’s how you want to see it, that’s okay. I won’t tell you that you’re wrong. It must’ve been hard.” Zack’s expression is soft, and Micchi should appreciate it. But instead, he hates it.

“It was hard, but I’m not using it to victimize myself. I made my decisions that helped us get here, which is why I’m… I’m like this!” Micchi rakes a hand over his face, hissing when he pulls at his lip ring in the process. He’s not as used to it as he should be. “I’m just saying… I can’t go back. I can’t win that fight, and I don’t have any desire to die trying. Nii-san made his choice with his back to the wall and I’m doing the same thing, okay?”

Zack tilts his head back and Micchi watches him work his jaw, no doubt trying to tamp down his temper at Micchi’s harsh words. Maybe it isn’t fair to snap at him like this, not when he came all this way, but Micchi isn’t exactly in the charitable mood right now. “So you want to stay here?”

“No. Not really. It’s just a pit stop for me.” Micchi picks at a loose thread on the lapel of Zack’s jacket. “I’ve got what I need, I’m just dragging my feet on moving on from here. This isn’t even the first place I’ve been.”

“So you’re going to keep going? Just keep… Traveling to more cities?” Zack sounds like he’s editing himself, and Micchi doesn’t know why he’s bothering when Micchi hasn’t bothered to soften a single thing he’s said so far.

He nods, tilting his chin up, his eyes narrowing. “Yeah. You got a problem with that?”

“No, I just… You know I really care about you, right? And I don’t want to leave you. I came all the way out here hoping I was going to find you, and maybe it was wrong of me to assume I could just bring you home because I wanted to.” Zack stops again and MIcchi wets his lips, watching him struggle to find the words he needs. “Ultimately, I want to stay with you. I want to help you in any way that I can. So help me do that.”

Of course he does. It’s such a Zack thing to do and say and Micchi should hardly be surprised at this answer from him given how he is as a person, but Zack being with him would only make this that much harder for him. After all, Micchi had left alone for a reason. If he wanted Zack to come with him, he would have just asked, and he has no doubt Zack would have come with him given he was willing to come all the way out here to find him.

He had left all of that behind to try to put distance between him and the problems he had caused, and as much as he does care about Zack, he had intentionally left Zack behind. There had been no note, no warning about where he was going or what he was doing, and no clue as to where he could be found. He hadn’t wanted anyone to find him, least of all Zack, who still had faith in him long after Micchi had realized everything he did wrong and how much of this situation rested on his shoulders. It would be better for Zack to go back home, even if Zawame was hell incarnate, because that was where he belonged.

Micchi didn’t have a home. Micchi had nowhere to belong. It made sense for him to wander.

“I don’t think I want you to do that,” he says, choosing his words with far less care than Zack had. When Zack grimaces, he knows he’s making his point known. “I kind of came out here on my own, and I intended to stay on my own. You know what I mean?”

Zack shakes his head. “You’re not the loner type. You didn’t join Gaim because you wanted to be all by yourself. That’s not who you are as a person so I have a hard time believing you’re suddenly a loner. If this is about what happened with Yggdrasil—”

“Of course it is! What else could it be about?” Micchi chews on his lip ring, a bad habit he knows he needs to kick and one he has no desire to. He has plenty of bad habits, and all of them have been getting him through the nights when his demons catch up with him and refuse to let him rest. “Anyway, go back home. I’m leaving in a few days, anyway.”

“I don’t want to leave you after I just found you. Do you know how long I’ve missed you? How long I’ve wanted to come find you? I learned the patrols just so I could come find you. Why would I just leave you out here alone?” Zack leans over him, using that height to his full advantage.

Micchi puts his hands against Zack’s chest, trying to put more distance between them even though his back is almost against the window and he isn’t strong enough to push Zack away, not really, not when he’s like this. He had barely any strength to begin with, and now, with even less muscle mass on his side, he can’t do anything. “I don’t care about any of that. Zack, I… You were good for me once but now, I’m not good for  _ you. _ You should just go home.”

“If you tell me to go home and mean it, then I will. But otherwise, I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving you here alone. Do you see yourself?” Zack grabs him before he can duck out of the way, his hand darting underneath the shoulder of Micchi’s t-shirt to grip his bare shoulder. “You’ve not been eating, and I know that because you’ve lost so much weight. You’re… The drugs are your problem, okay, I’m not going to try to say anything about that. You… What did you even do with your hair and your face? The piercings? Who  _ are _ you now?”

Micchi finds renewed strength and shoves Zack back a few steps, just enough to get out away from him and put serious distance between them. “I don’t know! I don’t fucking know, Zack. I just… I’m trying to figure out what to do. I don’t know what to do. I just know I don’t want to go back. It’s not as easy as you make it out to be. Sure, Kouta wouldn’t say anything to my face, but I know he was disappointed with me. I know that he was upset with me. I know that Mai was angry with me. Kaito  _ did _ say things, and he was right to do it.”

“You don’t have to tell me. I know how they felt. But I don’t care. I just…” Zack stops and Micchi looks over his shoulder at him, wishing there was something he could say to make Zack understand how he feels. “I know you fucked up, okay? We all did. We played right into your brother’s hands and we did exactly what he wanted us to do. That was our choice. We all made it. They did what they could because we used the Lockseeds. So stop trying to take all the blame onto yourself. Leave some for the rest of us, at least.”

Micchi scoffs at him. “I don’t think you can stay with me when you see me like this. You still going to be here when you see me take pills?”

“Whatever I have to do for you to trust me, I will,” Zack says, and Micchi blinks at him, not sure what to say. “Yeah, I’ll… I’ll stay here. I won’t say anything. I’ll watch it all. Just… I don’t want to go back home if it means leaving you behind. I  _ love _ you, Mitsuzane. I mean that.”

He’d busted out Micchi’s birth name; the thought makes Micchi smile wryly. He must have been serious, then. After all, Micchi had told him a long time ago he never used his full name because it made him think of his family, the last thing he wanted to do. It made him think of Takatora, and about how the last thing he wanted to do was be grouped in with his brother.

His nickname was one of his only forms of freedom.

_ You’ll ruin him just like you’ve ruined everything else. _ The voice is low but to the point, toxic as poison and Micchi grits his teeth at the sound of it.  _ Maybe that’s what he gets for loving you. _

“Fine. But the minute you get in my way, you have to go. Deal?” Micchi asks.

Zack finally smiles at him. “Deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> this one is gonna be hella dark. based on an au i spawned after seeing takasugi play [matsunaga](http://amidstthedark.tumblr.com/post/121358320358/%E6%B8%87%E3%81%8D-%E9%AB%98%E6%9D%89%E7%9C%9F%E5%AE%99) in world of kanako. that film is bad, though, i don't recommend it. as the tags so imply, this fic will deal heavily with drug abuse, withdrawal, and recovery, as well as heavy corruption and various other dark themes. tags will be added as necessary.


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